Scott,

As one of the guilty, let me say that for a lot of people "whom" is very much alive, including me.  I use it pretty regularly.  However, control of "whom" and, to a lesser extent, of wh-relatives in general is a sign of a family tradition of education.  The wh-relatives came into English as a feature of educated English, necessarily, given the fact that medieval writers and scribes who introduced them both in the 10th and in the 13th cc., were among the educated elite.  Especially "whom" but also generally the whole wh-relative system has uncertain status in non-standard dialects and in families that do not have a tradition of education because it didn't start there and never actually spread beyond its educated milieu.

I believe it was at a TESOL convention decades ago that I saw, but unfortunately did not pick up, a lapel button with the inscription "I favor whom's doom."  You can't help it that, like me, you're part of the educated elite of English speakers.  I have taught ESL, by the way, and I've been careful to tell students that in formal and academic English they need to follow the formal register rules about wh-relatives vs. that and which, rules that I know to have no basis in English outside of prescriptivism.  But they're prescribed, and so we have to train our students to follow those prescriptions.  But I also tell them that they are not a mark of colloquial English and may even stigmatize their colloquial English if used in the wrong social contexts.

Herb

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott
Sent: 2009-01-25 13:20
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: who/whom/that/which

Who lost 'whom'?  I am reminded of the "God is dead" bumper stickers of the
late '60s and the response stickers, "My God is alive, sorry about yours."
My 'whom' is alive and well--used in oral conversations and in emails and
letters to family and friends.  No one has ever commented upon my usage of
'whom.' 

In addition, I have clear rules for 'who/whom' vs. 'that' as relative
pronouns: who/whom is for humans and anthropomorphizations; that/which
for non-human.  To avoid confusion in restrictive and non-restrictive
clauses, I use 'that' for restrictive and 'which,' for non-restrictive
and have taught that as a suggestion--not a rule--to students who have
always found it helpful

If grammars have problems with my 'who' vs. 'that', I suggest that the
problem lies in the grammars--not the native speaker.

In addition, reading the postings of my learned (I'm being literal--not
sarcastic) colleagues, I wonder how many of them have taught English as 
a foreign language and what those colleagues think about the discussion. 

Scott Catledge
>
The loss of use of "whom" I think rather reflects that it was fairly 
late to make the shift from interrogative pronoun to relative and never 
really got established in the grammar in the first place.  So its shaky
status today is a reflection of its shaky history.
>
> Herb
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